Have you ever wondered why artist’s paint what they paint? Why does one artist choose one subject over others? Or why does an artist paint in a certain style? After perusing my website for the first time, a visitor commented, “What is behind your concentration on spiders? I have a fear of spiders, so I noticed right away.”

“Good question and thanks for visiting my website. I hope the spiders didn’t scare you away; please visit again”.

I thought the answer would make a good blog post, so here it goes…

The imagination of an artist is both a curse and a gift. It provides a plethora of ideas and inspiration for creating art. Compositional suggestions, random snippets of real and imagined characters and landscapes provides us with the ability to see the world differently from non-artistic folks. I paint what my imagination throws at me, I enjoy the assortment of styles this forces on me. It keeps skills sharp and is more fun. The colorful chaos that swirls in the depths of mine is a constant source of inspiration for creating art. Until it isn’t.

It was during one of those painful moments of artistic block, that the search for something to create turned my eye towards our scary, hairy little friends. Inspiration sort of jumped out at me from within the darkness of a closet. In other words; a big ole spider surprised me. Seeing it jump in response to my shrieking got me to wondering, what’s it like to be the spider that is suddenly surprised by a big ole hairy human? So, while wiping up the spider goo, the ideas started taking shape. (I’m sorry to all you spider lovers. It scared the crap outa me, and c’mon the closet had an assortment of shoes ready to protect me!)

Recording my thoughts and sketching answers to all the questions that my mind was conjuring up helped develop the theme beginning to take shape. Or was it just nightmare fodder? Maybe a little bit. Researching spider images kept me awake for many a night. Fortunately the sleepless nights helped fill the sketchbook and added more fuel to the series of paintings that were now caught up in the chaos stream.

Painting spiders to express shock and surprise required help from a creepy model; so I used a porcelain doll. Using duct tape to position her in a variety of poses added to the creep factor. (I didn’t add the tape in any of the finished pieces. To see that, you’d have to look through the sketchbook) These paintings were also influenced by my research into other artist’s (Francis Bacon and Max Beckmann for example) Prior to any creepy, spider artwork my paintings had been fairly bucolic in nature. Thus the need for research. This is common practice in my work as an artist.

After completing my first spider themed painting, it was time to give it a title. This can sometimes be a difficult task; sometimes the mind has nothing to offer. Other times it offers a gift. Deciding to title the first piece, “Meeting Miss Muffet” led to the series being titled along the altered lines of the Little Miss Muffet nursery rhyme.

And so my friends that’s why I painted spiders. The series as it currently stands is as follows:

“Meeting Miss Muffet”

“Along Came A Spider”

“And Sat Down Beside Her”

“Eating Their Curds Away”

“And Frightened Us All Away”

Yes, I know the series is missing “Sat On Her Tuffet” I’m working on it; stay tuned!